Simulation hypothesis
The simulation hypothesis or simulation theory is the proposal that all of reality, including the Earth and the
rest of the universe, could in fact be an artificial simulation, such as a computer simulation. Some versions rely
on the development of a simulated reality, a proposed technology that would be able to convince its inhabitants
that the simulation was "real". The simulation hypothesis bears a close resemblance to various other skeptical
scenarios from throughout the history of philosophy. The hypothesis was popularized in its current form by
Nick Bostrom. The suggestion that such a hypothesis is compatible with all of our perceptual experiences is
thought to have significant epistemological consequences in the form of philosophical skepticism. Versions of
the hypothesis have also been featured in science fiction, appearing as a central plot device in many stories and
films.
Contents
Origins
Simulation hypothesis
The simulation argument
Criticism of Bostrom's anthropic reasoning
Arguments, within the trilemma, against the simulation hypothesis
Consequences of living in a simulation
Testing the hypothesis physically
Other uses of the simulation hypothesis in philosophy
In popular culture
Science fiction themes
See also
References
Further reading
External links
Origins
There is a long philosophical and scientific history to the underlying thesis that reality is an illusion. This
skeptical hypothesis can be traced back to antiquity; for example, to the "Butterfly Dream" of Zhuangzi,[1] or
the Indian philosophy of Maya, or in Ancient Greek philosophy Anaxarchus and Monimus likened existing
things to a scene-painting and supposed them to resemble the impressions experienced in sleep or madness.[2]
A version of the hypothesis was also theorised as a part of a philosophical argument by René Descartes.
Simulation hypothesis
Nick Bostrom's premise:
Many works of science fiction as well as some forecasts by serious technologists and futurologists
predict that enormous amounts of computing power will be available in the future. Let us suppose
for a moment that these predictions are correct. One thing that later generations might do with
their super-powerful computers is run detailed simulations of their forebears or of people like their
forebears. Because their computers would be so powerful, they could run a great many such
simulations. Suppose that these simulated people are conscious (as they would be if the
simulations were sufficiently fine-grained and if a certain quite widely accepted position in the
philosophy of mind is correct). Then it could be the case that the vast majority of minds like ours
do not belong to the original race but rather to people simulated by the advanced descendants of
an original race.
Nick Bostrom's conclusion:
It is then possible to argue that, if this were the case, we would be
rational to think that we are likely among the simulated minds rather
than among the original biological ones.
Therefore, if we don't think that we are currently living in a
computer simulation, we are not entitled to believe that we will have
descendants who will run lots of such simulations of their forebears.
Nick Bostrom in 2014
— Nick Bostrom, Are you living in a computer simulation?,
2003[3]
The simulation argument
In 2003, philosopher Nick Bostrom proposed a trilemma that he called "the simulation argument". Despite the
name, Bostrom's "simulation argument" does not directly argue that we live in a simulation; instead, Bostrom's
trilemma argues that one of three unlikely-seeming propositions is almost certainly true:
1. "The fraction of human-level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage (that is, one capable of
running high-fidelity ancestor simulations) is very close to zero", or
2. "The fraction of posthuman civilizations that are interested in running simulations of their
evolutionary history, or variations thereof, is very close to zero", or
3. "The fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in a simulation is very
close to one."
The trilemma points out that a technologically mature "posthuman" civilization would have enormous
computing power; if even a tiny percentage of them were to run "ancestor simulations" (that is, "high-fidelity"
simulations of ancestral life that would be indistinguishable from reality to the simulated ancestor), the total
number of simulated ancestors, or "Sims", in the universe (or multiverse, if it exists) would greatly exceed the
total number of actual ancestors.
Bostrom goes on to use a type of anthropic reasoning to claim that, if the third proposition is the one of those
three that is true, and almost all people with our kind of experiences live in simulations, then we are almost
certainly living in a simulation.
Bostrom claims his argument goes beyond the classical ancient "skeptical hypothesis", claiming that "...we
have interesting empirical reasons to believe that a certain disjunctive claim about the world is true", the third
of the three disjunctive propositions being that we are almost certainly living in a simulation. Thus, Bostrom,
and writers in agreement with Bostrom such as David Chalmers, argue there might be empirical reasons for the
"simulation hypothesis", and that therefore the simulation hypothesis is not a skeptical hypothesis but rather a
"metaphysical hypothesis". Bostrom states he personally sees no strong argument as to which of the three
trilemma propositions is the true one: "If (1) is true, then we will almost certainly go extinct before reaching
posthumanity. If (2) is true, then there must be a strong convergence among the courses of advanced
civilizations so that virtually none contains any individuals who desire to run ancestor-simulations and are free
to do so. If (3) is true, then we almost certainly live in a simulation. In the dark forest of our current ignorance,
it seems sensible to apportion one's credence roughly evenly between (1), (2), and (3)... I note that people who
hear about the simulation argument often react by saying, 'Yes, I accept the argument, and it is obvious that it is
possibility #n that obtains.' But different people pick a different n. Some think it obvious that (1) is true, others
that (2) is true, yet others that (3) is true."
As a corollary to the trilemma, Bostrom states that "Unless we are now living in a simulation, our descendants
will almost certainly never run an ancestor-simulation."[3][4][5][6]
Criticism of Bostrom's anthropic reasoning
Bostrom argues that if "the fraction of all people with our kind of experiences that are living in a simulation is
very close to one", then it follows that we probably live in a simulation. Some philosophers disagree,
proposing that perhaps "Sims" do not have conscious experiences the same way that unsimulated humans do,
or that it can otherwise be self-evident to a human that they are a human rather than a Sim.[4][7] Philosopher
Barry Dainton modifies Bostrom's trilemma by substituting "neural ancestor simulations" (ranging from literal
brains in a vat, to far-future humans with induced high-fidelity hallucinations that they are their own distant
ancestors) for Bostrom's "ancestor simulations", on the grounds that every philosophical school of thought can
agree that sufficiently high-tech neural ancestor simulation experiences would be indistinguishable from non-
simulated experiences. Even if high-fidelity computer Sims are never conscious, Dainton's reasoning leads to
the following conclusion: either the fraction of human-level civilizations that reach a posthuman stage and are
able and willing to run large numbers of neural ancestor simulations is close to zero, or we are in some kind of
(possibly neural) ancestor simulation.[8]
Some scholars categorically reject—or are uninterested in—anthropic reasoning, dismissing it as "merely
philosophical", unfalsifiable, or inherently unscientific.[4]
Some critics propose that we could be in the first generation, and all the simulated people that will one day be
created do not yet exist.[4]
The cosmologist Sean M. Carroll argues that the simulation hypothesis leads to a contradiction: if a civilization
is capable of performing simulations, then it will likely perform many simulations, which implies that we are
most likely at the lowest level of simulation (from which point one's impression will be that it is impossible to
perform a simulation), which contradicts the arguer's assumption that it is easy for us to foresee that advanced
civilizations can most likely perform simulations.[9]
Arguments, within the trilemma, against the simulation hypothesis
Some scholars accept the trilemma, and argue that the first or second of the propositions are true, and that the
third proposition (the proposition that we live in a simulation) is false. Physicist Paul Davies deploys Bostrom's
trilemma as part of one possible argument against a near-infinite multiverse. This argument runs as follows: if
there were a near-infinite multiverse, there would be posthuman civilizations running ancestor simulations, and
therefore we would come to the untenable and scientifically self-defeating conclusion that we live in a
simulation; therefore, by reductio ad absurdum, existing multiverse theories are likely false. (Unlike Bostrom
and Chalmers, Davies (among others) considers the simulation hypothesis to be self-defeating.)[4][10]
Some point out that there is currently no proof of technology which
would facilitate the existence of sufficiently high-fidelity ancestor
simulation. Additionally, there is no proof that it is physically possible
or feasible for a posthuman civilization to create such a simulation,
and therefore for the present, the first proposition must be true.[4]
Additionally there are limits of computation.[3]
Consequences of living in a simulation
Economist Robin Hanson argues a self-interested high-fidelity Sim
should strive to be entertaining and praiseworthy in order to avoid
being turned off or being shunted into a non-conscious low-fidelity
part of the simulation. Hanson additionally speculates that someone
who is aware that he might be a Sim might care less about others and
live more for today: "your motivation to save for retirement, or to help
the poor in Ethiopia, might be muted by realizing that in your
simulation, you will never retire and there is no Ethiopia."[11]
Play media
Testing the hypothesis physically Simulation down to molecular level of
very small sample of matter
A method to test one type of simulation hypothesis was proposed in
2012 in a joint paper by physicists Silas R. Beane from the University
of Bonn (now at the University of Washington, Seattle), and Zohreh Davoudi and Martin J. Savage from the
University of Washington, Seattle.[12] Under the assumption of finite computational resources, the simulation
of the universe would be performed by dividing the continuum space-time into a discrete set of points. In
analogy with the mini-simulations that lattice-gauge theorists run today to build up nuclei from the underlying
theory of strong interactions (known as quantum chromodynamics), several observational consequences of a
grid-like space-time have been studied in their work. Among proposed signatures is an anisotropy in the
distribution of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays, that, if observed, would be consistent with the simulation
hypothesis according to these physicists.[13] In 2017, Campbell et al. proposed several experiments aimed at
testing the simulation hypothesis in their paper "On Testing the Simulation Theory".[14]
In 2019, philosopher Preston Greene suggested that it may be best not to find out if we're living in a simulation
since, if it were found to be true, such knowing may end the simulation.[15]
Other uses of the simulation hypothesis in philosophy
Besides attempting to assess whether the simulation hypothesis is true or false, philosophers have also used it
to illustrate other philosophical problems, especially in metaphysics and epistemology. David Chalmers has
argued that simulated beings might wonder whether their mental lives are governed by the physics of their
environment, when in fact these mental lives are simulated separately (and are thus, in fact, not governed by
the simulated physics).[16] They might eventually find that their thoughts fail to be physically caused.
Chalmers argues that this means that Cartesian dualism is not necessarily as problematic of a philosophical
view as is commonly supposed, though he does not endorse it.
In popular culture
The first to state the basic concept of reality as a simulation was Plato in 380BCE, in the famous Allegory of
the Cave, describing people imprisoned since childhood (but not since birth) led to believe that artificial light-
based representations of reality were truly real when, in fact, they were a fabricated illusion.
Science fiction themes
Science fiction has highlighted themes such as virtual reality, artificial intelligence and computer gaming for
more than fifty years. Simulacron-3 (1964) by Daniel F. Galouye (alternative title: Counterfeit World) tells the
story of a virtual city developed as a computer simulation for market research purposes, in which the simulated
inhabitants possess consciousness; all but one of the inhabitants are unaware of the true nature of their world.
The book was made into a German made-for-TV film called World on a Wire (1973) directed by Rainer
Werner Fassbinder. The movie The Thirteenth Floor (1999) was also loosely based on this book. "We Can
Remember It for You Wholesale" is a short story by American writer Philip K. Dick, first published in The
Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in April 1966, and was the basis for Total Recall (1990 film) and Total
Recall (2012 film). In Overdrawn at the Memory Bank, a 1983 television movie, the main character pays to
have his mind connected to a simulation.
The 1993 Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Ship in a Bottle" explores the idea of people being
unaware they are living in simulation, with Picard postulating at the end that perhaps they are also in a
simulation playing out in a box on a table. This is also a possible use of dramatic irony, with both the actors
and audience aware the television programme is indeed a simulation of sorts.
The same theme was repeated in the 1999 film The Matrix, which depicted a world in which artificially
intelligent robots enslaved humanity within a simulation set in the contemporary world. The 2012 play World
of Wires was partially inspired by the Bostrom essay on the simulation hypothesis.[17] In the episode
"Extremis" (broadcast on 20 May 2017 on BBC One) of the science fiction series Doctor Who, aliens called
"The Monks" plan an invasion of Earth by running and studying a holographic simulation of Earth with
conscious inhabitants. When the virtual Doctor finds out about the simulation he sends an email about the
simulation to his real self so that the real Doctor can save the world. In the first season of Rick and Morty, a
science-fiction animated comedy, the episode "M. Night Shaym-Aliens!" (2014) aliens trap the lead role
(Rick) in a simulated reality in order to trick him into revealing his formula for concentrated dark matter. The
hypothesis also serves as the climax of No Man's Sky's overarching plot, in which it was revealed that the
game's setting itself was a simulation and that the player character is a member of a race made to explore it. In
the game Xenoblade Chronicles, it is revealed that the whole world of the gods Bionis and Mechonis was a
simulation run by Alvis, the administrative computer of a phase transition experiment facility (heavily implied
to be "Ontos" in Xenoblade Chronicles 2) after Klaus destroyed the universe in a multiverse experiment.
See also
Zhuangzi
Avatamsaka Sutra
Digital physics
Holographic principle
Mathematical universe hypothesis
Simulated reality
References
1. Grabianowski, Ed (7 May 2011). "You're living in a computer simulation, and math proves it" (htt
ps://io9.gizmodo.com/5799396/youre-living-in-a-computer-simulation-and-math-proves-it).
Gizmodo. Retrieved 29 October 2016.
2. Sextus Empiricus Against the Logicians 1.88
3. Bostrom, Nick (2003). "Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?" (http://simulation-argument.c
om/simulation.html). Philosophical Quarterly. 53 (211): 243–255. doi:10.1111/1467-
9213.00309 (https://doi.org/10.1111%2F1467-9213.00309).
4. The Simulation Argument Website (http://simulation-argument.com/faq.html) FAQ
5. The Simulation Argument: Why the Probability that You Are Living in a Matrix is Quite High (htt
p://simulation-argument.com/matrix.html), Nick Bostrom, Professor of Philosophy at Oxford
University, 2003
6. Davis J. Chalmers The Matrix as Metaphysics (http://consc.net/papers/matrix.html) Dept of
Philosophy, U. o Arizona; paper written for the philosophy section of The Matrix website.
7. Weatherson, Brian (2003). "Are You a Sim?". The Philosophical Quarterly. 53 (212): 425–431.
doi:10.1111/1467-9213.00323 (https://doi.org/10.1111%2F1467-9213.00323).
JSTOR 3543127 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/3543127).
8. Dainton, Barry (2012). "On singularities and simulations". Journal of Consciousness Studies.
19 (1): 42. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.374.7434 (https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.
1.1.374.7434).
9. Carroll, Sean (22 August 2016). "Maybe We Do Not Live in a Simulation: The Resolution
Conundrum" (http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2016/08/22/maybe-we-do-not-live-in-
a-simulation-the-resolution-conundrum/). PreposterousUniverse.com.
10. Davies, P. C. W. (2004). "Multiverse Cosmological Models". Modern Physics Letters A. 19 (10):
727–743. arXiv:astro-ph/0403047 (https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0403047).
Bibcode:2004MPLA...19..727D (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2004MPLA...19..727D).
doi:10.1142/S021773230401357X (https://doi.org/10.1142%2FS021773230401357X).
11. Hanson, Robin (2001). "How to live in a simulation" (https://www.jetpress.org/volume7/simulati
on.pdf) (PDF). Journal of Evolution and Technology. 7.
12. Beane, Silas; Zohreh Davoudi; Martin J. Savage (9 November 2012). "Constraints on the
Universe as a Numerical Simulation". arXiv:1210.1847 (https://arxiv.org/abs/1210.1847).
Bibcode:2014EPJA...50..148B (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2014EPJA...50..148B).
doi:10.1140/epja/i2014-14148-0 (https://doi.org/10.1140%2Fepja%2Fi2014-14148-0). Lay
summary (http://www.technologyreview.com/view/429561/the-measurement-that-would-reveal-t
he-universe-as-a-computer-simulation/) – The Physics arXiv Blog (October 10, 2012).
"ABSTRACT Observable consequences of the hypothesis that the observed universe is a
numerical simulation performed on a cubic space-time lattice or grid are explored. The
simulation scenario is first motivated by extrapolating current trends in computational resource
requirements for lattice QCD into the future. Using the historical development of lattice gauge
theory technology as a guide, we assume that our universe is an early numerical simulation
with unimproved Wilson fermion discretization and investigate potentially-observable
consequences. Among the observables that are considered are the muon g-2 and the current
differences between determinations of alpha, but the most stringent bound on the inverse lattice
spacing of the universe, b−1 > ~ 10^ 11 GeV, is derived from the high-energy cut off of the
cosmic ray spectrum. The numerical simulation scenario could reveal itself in the distributions
of the highest energy cosmic rays exhibiting a degree of rotational symmetry breaking that
reflects the structure of the underlying lattice."
13. Moskowitz, Clara (7 April 2016). "Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?" (https://www.scient
ificamerican.com/article/are-we-living-in-a-computer-simulation/). Scientific American.
14. Campbell, Tom; Owhadi, Houman; Sauvageau, Joe; Watkinson, David (June 17, 2017). "On
Testing the Simulation Theory" (https://www.ijqf.org/archives/4105). International Journal of
Quantum Foundations. 3 (3): 78–99.
15. Greene, Preston (10 August 2019). "Are We Living in a Computer Simulation? Let's Not Find
Out - Experimental findings will be either boring or extremely dangerous" (https://www.nytimes.
com/2019/08/10/opinion/sunday/are-we-living-in-a-computer-simulation-lets-not-find-out.html).
The New York Times. Retrieved 11 August 2019.
16. Chalmers, David (January 1990). "How Cartesian Dualism Might Have Been True" (http://cons
c.net/notes/dualism.html).
17. Brantley, Ben (January 16, 2012). " 'World of Wires' at the Kitchen — Review" (http://theater.nyti
mes.com/2012/01/17/theater/reviews/world-of-wires-at-the-kitchen-review.html). The New York
Times.
Further reading
"Are We Living in a Simulation?" BBC Focus magazine, March 2013, pages 43–45. Interview
with physicist Silas Beane of the University of Bonn discussing a proposed test for simulated
reality evidence. Three pages, three photos, including one of Beane and a computer-generated
scene from the film The Matrix. Publisher: Immediate Media Company, Bristol, UK.
"Do We Live in the Matrix?" by Zeeya Merali, Discover, December 2013, pages 24–25.
Subtitle: "Physicists have proposed tests to reveal whether we are part of a giant computer
simulation."
Tom Campbell, Houman Owhadi, Joe Sauvageau, David Watkinson: On testing the simulation
theory. arXiv:1703.00058 (https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.00058).
Conitzer, Vincent. A Puzzle about Further Facts. (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-018-9979-6)
Open access version of article in Erkenntnis.
Virk, Rizwan. The Simulation Hypothesis: An MIT Computer Scientist Shows Why AI, Quantum
Physics, and Eastern Mystics All Agree We Are In a Video Game. (https://hackernoon.com/the-
great-simulation-why-quantum-physics-artificial-intelligence-and-eastern-mystics-all-agree-b6c
185213a18)
Lev, Gid'on. Life in the Matrix (https://www.academia.edu/39620386/Life_in_the_Matrix).
Haaretz Magazine, April 25, 2019, page 6.
External links
Are You Living In a Computer Simulation? (http://simulation-argument.com/) Nick Bostrom's
Simulation Argument webpage.
Techniques for programming a Simulation Universe at the Planck level (http://planckmomentu
m.com/)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Simulation_hypothesis&oldid=980823180"
This page was last edited on 28 September 2020, at 17:39 (UTC).
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this
site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia
Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.
